Word: berlitz
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Some Can't Take It. The course is especially tough on business executives. "They are ordered about as if they were children," explains Huarte, "although they are accustomed to giving orders." Berlitz candidly tells a company when its execs can't take it-and refunds the tuition. Engineers and teachers are also troublesome because "they always seem to have to know the whys and wherefores," which the Berlitz instructors consider irrelevant...
...Berlitz course is flexible enough to handle the specialized vocabulary various occupations require. The motivation, however, need not be vocational. Mrs. Alfred Bloomingdale of Beverly Hills, whose husband is the French-speaking president of the Diners' Club, found each day both "exhausting and exhilarating." She also discovered that "it's so nice to know what your husband is talking about...
...suddenly felt like crying when I was driving home." Mrs. Robert Stack, wife of the television actor, says: "You are almost hypnotized -and your mind goes blank. It's like being in a torture chamber." The horrifying experience Father Hogan and Mrs. Stack endured was distinctly beneficial: the Berlitz Schools' "Total Immersion" course, which aims to give its students a foreign-language fluency and vocabulary of 1,600 words a week...
Pioneered by the armed forces language schools (Time, July 16, 1965), the Total Immersion technique was developed by Berlitz and offered for the first time 16 months ago, now can be taken at 48 of its 53 U.S. schools in 52 languages. Students in less of a hurry can still choose Berlitz' more leisurely courses. No pastime for the idly curious, the intensive instruction costs $118.50 a day. The course's 1,120 graduates are mostly Government employees and business executives who have been assigned overseas...
Receptive to Ideas. The psychology of the Total Immersion technique, as Berlitz officials unashamedly admit, is suspiciously close to that of brainwashing. "What we try to do," says New York Berlitz Director Emanuel Huarte, "is to break students down mentally until they lose the ability to resist and are receptive to fresh ideas." The breakdown begins to the clang of an 8:15 a.m. bell in a windowless classroom, where the student faces one of his four alternating instructors. Student and teacher speak nothing but the foreign language during eleven 40-minute periods, relieved only by five-minute English breaks...